Does The Bible Need Defending?

Sometimes when someone witnesses to an unbeliever by appealing
to arguments and evidence that point to the truth of Christianity, some
believers will tell the Christian that The Bible does not need them to defend
it. “The Truth does not need to be defended. It is like a lion. All you need
to do is let it out of its cage” they will say. A Lion can defend itself.
It is ferocious, it has sharp powerful jaws and razor sharp claws. Its roar
strikes fear into its prey. Its roar carries authority. Why would you need to
defend such an animal? You don’t. So these Christians will say that The Bible
is the same way. This is supposed to be an argument that Christian Apologetics
is a pointless exercise.

The Bible commands us to do
apologetics. 1 Peter 3:15 says “But
in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be ready to give a defenseto anyone who asks for the reason for the hope that you have, yet
do this with gentleness and respect”. This verse of The Bible is clear and
unequivocal. Always be prepared to defend your faith whenever anyone asks you
to give the reasons for why you have placed your hope in Jesus Christ. So even
if we concede the premise that the Christian faith doesn’t need to be defended,
we are still commanded to defend it. Ignoring this command would therefore be
sinful.

The Apostle Paul said in his
second letter to the church in Corinth “We demolish arguments and every
pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take
captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).
This is what apologetics is all about. We need to “demolish arguments” like
the problem of evil & suffering, the hiddenness of God, supposed
contradictions people think they have found in scripture, or simply the claim
“There is no evidence for God’s existence”. These are arguments that set “itself
up against the knowledge of God” that we need to “demolish”. If we
do, then we might be able to “take every thought captive and make it
obedient to Christ”.

In Philippians 1:7 Paul speaks of
his mission as “defending and confirming the gospel.” Then he
says in Philippians 1:16, “I am put here for the defense of the
gospel.” This implies that God placed Paul on this planet to be a defender
of the Christian faith, which he was. When you read Acts 17, you see that when
Paul and his companions had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came
to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue (Acts 17:1) and then it
says that as was his custom, he “reasoned with them from the Scriptures
…” (verse 2), “explaining and proving that the Messiah had to
suffer and rise from the dead.” (verse 3) and then after he explained and
proved to the Jews that the messiah had to suffer and rise, “Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and
Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent
women.” This is important, because often you will hear some Christians say
that no one comes to faith through arguments. But we have an example of some of
the people coming to faith after hearing Paul’s arguments. Acts 17:4 refutes
that notion.

Then several verses later, Paul
was in Athens witnessing to the Athenians. And Acts 17:17 says “he
reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as
well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there.”
Other translations say he “disputed” with them, or he “debated”
them. Now, he was able to reason from the scriptures with the Jews, but he
couldn’t do that with the Athenians. Why? Because the Athenians didn’t accept
the Jewish scriptures as divinely inspired. So he appealed to natural
revelation instead (see Acts 17:22-31).

Jude 3 says, “Dear friends,
although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt
I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for
all entrusted to the saints.” The people Jude addressed had been assaulted
by false teachers, and he needed to encourage them to protect (literally
agonize for) the faith as it had been revealed through Christ. Jude makes a
significant statement about our attitude in verse 22, that we "have mercy on
some, who are doubting".

So, does The Bible need defending? I think the answer to the
question is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter whether God, or The Bible, or
Christianity needs defending. The Bible commands us to defend it.

* Rational People
Naturally Desire Reasons Before They Believe Something.

God created humans to reason as
part of his image (Genesis 1:26-27,
Genesis 9:6). It is by reasoning that humans are distinguished from “brute
beasts” (Jude 10). God calls upon his people to use reason (see Isaiah 1:18) to discern truth from error (1 John 4:6) and right from
wrong (Hebrews 5:14). The primary standard of rationality is that it should cough
up epistemological warrant for belief.

As Norman Geisler put it in his
article “The Need For Apologetics”

“People rightly refuse to
believe without evidence. Since God created humans as rational beings, he
expects them to live rationally, to look before they leap. This does not mean
there is no room for faith. But God wants us to take a step of faith in the
light of evidence, rather than to leap in the dark. Evidence of truth should
precede faith. No rational person steps in an elevator without some reason to
believe it will hold him up. No reasonable person gets on an airplane that is
missing part of one wing and smells of smoke in the cabin. People deal in two
dimensions of belief: belief that and belief in. Belief that
gives the evidence and rational basis for confidence needed to establish belief
in. Once belief that is established, one can place faith in it. Thus, the
rational person wants evidence that God exists before he places his faith in
God. Rational unbelievers want evidence that Jesus is the Son of God before
they place their trust in him.” – Norman
Geisler (emphasis in original)

So, I don’t think it’s sufficient
to just give an unbeliever a Bible and walk away and “let the truth defend
itself”. For one reason, there are many holy books out there claiming to be
“the truth”. The rational unbeliever is going to want you to give some reasons
for him to think that The Bible should be believed instead of, say, The Koran,
or the Hindu scriptures, or the Buddhist scriptures. He may ask you why you
disbelieve in all of the other gods of all of the other religions but not the
God of The Bible. That’s not too much to ask. And fortunately, we Christians
can meet that challenge if we do our homework. If you simply quote The Bible,
you’ll rightly be accused of circular reasoning.

*You Can Make
The Same Argument About Preaching The Gospel

If The Bible can defend itself,
why can’t it preach itself? Why can’t we just leave it up to the non-Christian
to go to their local book store or library, purchase a Bible, read it, and just
hope for the best? Why can’t we do that? Well, because, like defending the
gospel, scripture calls us to “Make disciples of all nations” (Matthew
28:19). We’re called to preach the gospel to a dark and dying world. We’re
called to spread the good news. Does God need us to preach the gospel for Him?
No. Probably not. But we’re called to do it anyway. And we’re called to do
Christian Apologetics also (see 1 Peter 3:15).

*In Conclusion

The Bible, God, Christianity may
not need defending. But that’s irrelevant because God commands us to “Always
be ready to give a defenseto anyone who asks for a reason for
the hope that you have,” (1 Peter 3:15). We are
called to defend our faith against the attacks of unbelievers. When someone
asks us why we believe what we believe, scripture commands us to give them
reasons. Moreover, people need evidence to determine whether The Bible even is
the word of God. How do we know the Bible is God’s revelation to us, as opposed
to the Qur'an or the Book of Mormon? One must appeal to evidence to determine
this. No Christian would accept a Muslim's statement that, “the Qur'an is
alive and powerful and sharper than a two-edged sword.” We would demand
evidence that the Qu’ran is God’s Word. As Norman Geisler
put it in his article “Why We Need Apologetics”; the analogy of a lion is
misleading. The only reason a lion’s roar has authority is because we have good
evidence of what a lion can do. But if you were just born yesterday or came from
another planet, would you be fearful of this big lion? Probably not. You might
try to go pet it and have your alien arm ripped off.

In addition to all of this, you
could make a parallel argument about evangelism in general. Why did Billy
Graham hold all of those crusades? Why did he travel all around the world
preaching to people? Why didn’t he just leave it up to the non-believer to go
to their local book stores, buy a Bible, read it, and hope for the best? If The
Bible can defend itself, why can’t the gospel preach itself?

I’ll end this blog post with a quote
from John Calvin. As a Molinist, I feel weird quoting him to make my point but
he’s dead on accurate here. He said “Even a dog barks when its master is
attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God’s truth is attacked and yet
would remain silent”.

Like Calvin, I cannot help but
bark when I see skeptics attack Christianity.